Acknowledging that there are large gaps in the knowledge of the geology of Alaska, the following threefold subdivision of Alaska into Paleozoic tectonic elements is proposed: Southern Alaska--the Alaska Range and farther south--is the northern end of the Paleozoic Cordilleran geosyncline that rims the eastern Pacific. Northern Alaska--the northeastern Brooks Range and the Arctic Coastal Plain--is underlain by a pre-Upper Devonian fold belt that may continue around the rim of the Canada Basin into the Franklinian geosyncline of the Canadian Arctic Islands. East-central Alaska, with a thinner, mainly carbonate rock section, seems to be a western extension of the Yukon shelf that separates the circum-Arctic geosynclinal trend from the Cordilleran geosyncline along the Pacific margin of southern Alaska.